Turkey sentences Caliph of Cologne to life in prison

Leading Turkish militant known as the Caliph of Cologne, Metin Kaplan (C) is escorted by Turkish gendarmes to a court in Istanbul. A Turkish court sentenced Kaplan to life in prison for plotting to overthrow Turkey's strictly secular system.

ISTANBUL (AFP) - A Turkish court sentenced Muslim extremist Metin Kaplan, alias "The Caliph of Cologne", to imprisonment for the rest of his life for plotting to overthrow Turkey's strictly secular system. Announcing the verdict at the end of a high-profile trial, judge Metin Cetinbas said Kaplan and his extremist group, based in Cologne in Germany, were "terrorists".

"Terrorism, whoever commits it and for whatever reason, is a crime against humanity," Cetinbas said. "Reactionaries will never be given a chance".

He announced that the court would not allow Kaplan to benefit from a reduction in his sentence because he showed no remorse during the trial and added that the cleric would be confined "until the day he dies".

Kaplan -- leader of the Union of Islamic Communities, also known as "Hilafet Devleti" (Caliphate State, in Turkish) -- had been on trial since December following his expulsion from Germany on charges linked to his role as the leader of the group, which aspires to set up a state in Turkey based on Islamic law.

Among them was an alleged 1998 bid to use an explosives-laden plane to blow up the mausoleum in Ankara of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the secular Turkish republic.

Kaplan's lawyer said they would appeal against the verdict, which he denounced as unfair. "We were expecting this verdict.

A fair verdict would have been an exception," attorney Husnu Tuna told AFP outside the courtroom. He charged that the court had decided beforehand to pronounce his client guilty without taking into account the arguments of the defence team.

"The text (of the verdict) contains elements which show that it has been prepared in advance," Tuna said.

Throughout the trial, Kaplan rejected the accusations directed against him but spoke out in favour installing the rule of Islam -- which he described as the best system in the world -- in Turkey.

"I never pushed people towards violence, hatred or terrorism," Kaplan told the tribunal in his final defence speech earlier Monday, denying that he was behind the plot to blow up Ataturk's mausoleum. "We are not separatists. We are not terrorists or anarchists. We want Muslims to gather around the Koran," he added.

"I want a Turkey where the Koran is the constitution, the Sharia is the law and Islam is the state." "You might not like my ideas, but you do not have the right to call me a terrorist," he charged.

Kaplan moved to Germany in 1983, where he was granted political asylum in 1992. He took over the leadership of Hilafet Devleti after the death in 1995 of his father, Cemaleddin Kaplan, a preacher known in Turkey as "The Voice of Darkness" for his ultra-radical Islamist views.

In Germany, Metin Kaplan and his family lived on welfare payments despite official estimates that his organisation had earned millions of dollars (euros) from donations and property deals.

He was jailed in Germany for four years from 1999 to 2003 for having ordered the killing of a rival during the struggle for his father's succession as leader of the organisation.

His group, which launched hate campaigns against Israel and Turkey, was banned in Germany in 2001 under legislation passed in the wake of the September 11 2001 attacks in the United States to crack down on Islamist extremists.

He was expelled to Turkey in October after a long legal battle. - AFP